


Fern-in-Bloom

by grayglube



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, F/M, M/M, Minor Angst, Multi, OT3, Romantic Friendship, Sexual Experimentation, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 14:58:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6709576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grayglube/pseuds/grayglube
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But there’s something in the balmy blanket of spring turning into summer all over the city tonight. It’s midsummer night’s eve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fern-in-Bloom

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy

Lydia and Magnus discuss things, things like an official summit between the Institutes, the Clave, and Downworlders of a more modern and humanitarian slant, things that would have seemed ludicrous and impossible a few months ago,

 

Their camaraderie is as startling as the first time he saw the excitement on Lydia’s face when she found out he knew _the_ Magnus Bane, High Warlock of Brooklyn, and the way Magnus had nothing but real praise for the way Lydia worked.

 

Magnus reminds him that it was never Lydia who pushed him to the periphery, Alec did that all on his own once.

 

“You should invite her for drinks, she works too hard.”

 

Things start simply enough.

* * *

 

“Solid partnership. That’s…hot.” It had been such a scathing thing to throw back in his face, and Alec’s never forgotten.

 

He’d felt bad, for Lydia.

 

They all thought she was the worst thing to happen back then. He wondered if it was because she was young, that she was Clave, that they couldn’t say no to her. Part of him respected that, all of him understood it.

 

He’d wanted that for himself once.

 

There’s the dress she wore on the day she was supposed to get married a second time in a pile of things she’s not bringing back with her to Idris.

 

He looks at it and falters, he’s meant to tell her goodbye.

 

Alec leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, trying for perpetual cool the way Jace always managed without effort.

 

“Why don’t you stay, for a few more months? Is Idris really more exciting than New York?”

 

She stops tossing things into piles.

 

“I like it here, you know?”

 

Alec shrugs, looks at her like his dad would when trying to gently persuade someone to do something, “So why are you leaving?”

 

He doesn’t wait for her answer, he doesn’t think she has one but he wouldn’t want to know what it is if she does.

 

She ends up staying.

* * *

 

Her phone is destroyed when she falls into a high-rise swimming pool during a hunt downtown that ends with her and Jace chasing a particularly unpleasant demon up forty flights of stairs. She doesn’t get the message about drinks being pushed back.

 

Alec tells her nine, Magnus texts her ten from the chaise lounge watching with cat eyes as Alec steps out of the bathroom. Alec’s asking about deodorant but Magnus waves a hand, the towel unwraps and folds itself into the laundry hamper.

 

“We don’t have time.”

 

“I took care of it.”

 

Lydia doesn’t knock, comes in speaking fast about how the bag she’s carrying is about to rip, says she’s a little late but she couldn’t call to tell them and stops, the bag rips and she’s trying to catch big plastic bottles of rum and cheap vodka, stuttering over her words, toes curling from having heavy things dropped on them and mouth gaping.

 

There’s Alec’s big thighs, feet stretching out and toes grabbing at whatever exotic downworld shade-cat hide covers the marble tile, the dark hair on his chest and abdomen catches her attention in some hardwired way that makes her want to preen all over, feel him against her breasts. His throat works, and every tendon pulls, he brings his head up from where’s it’s been hanging over the back of the couch, mouth open, eyes glassy, choking on the moan he can’t give full life to now that she’s standing three feet from where Magnus Bane is sucking him off.

 

To his credit Magnus has stopped but hasn’t pulled off.

 

Her boots click like typewriter clatter down the hall, she wouldn’t call it fleeing because she didn’t run but she did walk fast.  

 

It’s a moment they all silently decide to never talk about.

* * *

 

There's something he knows he shouldn't let distract him.

 

It’s something he’d gotten in his head after seeing Camille kiss Magnus. It’s the knowledge that Magnus has been with women before. It’s a realization of fact.

 

It doesn't make him feel inferior, it doesn't make him worried, but once he acknowledges it the image stays stuck somewhere in a part of his brain that Jace used to occupy.

 

In the formative years when he had phantom tingles in his dick at every opportune, inappropriate and unexpected moment.

 

At some point, long after he and Magnus have started their first fumblings towards intimacy, and he knows he’s the only one _really_ fumbling, Magnus tamps things down, goes slow, keeps it simple, Alec wakes up from a dream as arousing as it is unsettling of Magnus and Camille.

 

He’s wakes up and is pressed against Magnus, rutting him and the mattress softly during his slow awakening to real life.

 

In moments alone, at the Institute when a mission has stretched out too long for him to want anything but unconsciousness he’ll think about Magnus, he’ll think about Magnus and the kinds of lovers he must have had.

* * *

 

Alec kisses Lydia, it’s Isabelle’s birthday, everyone is happy, everyone is having a good time, it’s meant to be friendly, excitement all around, maybe he’s more curious than he ought to be, or more brave, overwhelmed by the sudden lack of seriousness the night has.

 

Lydia startles, “This isn’t funny, okay?”

 

“I…”

 

“Just…,” her forehead wrinkles, “don’t.”

 

Magnus is watching. He slips close to Alec’s side after Lydia's disappeared into the party, “That did not go well.”

 

He sighs, not comprehending his own sudden lack of restraint and tact. “What am I doing?”

 

Magnus just smiles, fond and amused. “When we first met you were so…emotionally insincere it was like spiritual constipation. Now it’s like,” Magnus claps his hand, “Bam! And spiritual inflammation, all over…everything.”

 

Alec’s stare is firm, “You just compared my feelings to irritable bowel syndrome.”

 

“Well, if the shoe fits.”

 

“You should write Hallmark cards.”

* * *

 

He means to catch Magnus by surprise, that's why he waits until they’re on mission, alone, “What was it like when you were with women?”

 

Magnus is hard to bait, his answer is quick. There are no questions he does not expect. “Why? Did you want to find out for yourself?”

 

“Deflection and a joke, never dealt with that before. You don’t have to answer if this is weirding you out.”

 

Magnus’ perfectly defined brows rise, as if in surprise, “Yes, true. I’m sorry. I'll quit playing coy.”

 

“Do you want to sleep with Lydia?”

 

“I don’t think I’ve considered it seriously enough for that to be a real option, but now I might have to.” Now there’s something beyond gentle teasing in his tone. “Are you giving me a hall pass?”

 

“I wouldn’t mind but I wouldn’t want to be the last to know.”

 

That does seem to surprise Magnus.

* * *

 

His mother was worried about him because he chose a downworlder with a reputation. It wasn’t concern over the fact that Magnus had a dick but rather where it had been.

 

Alec can respect that. No mother wants their child to be with someone with a reputation, to love them and end up broken hearted because of it.

 

He stretches out, thoroughly awake in the way he always is right after sex. Magnus dozes prone with his mouth pressed to the pillows, smokey eyes smudged far past fashionable and glitter streaking from his hairline, it’s all over the pillows and all over Alec's back.

 

“What’s the difference between sleeping with a man and sleeping with a woman?”

 

Magnus is so silent Alec thinks he might have really fallen asleep but in the bleariness of his postcoital haze Magnus answers, “Beyond the obvious?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“There’s an understanding with men that you don’t have with women, it’s comforting.”

 

“And?”

 

“And with women there’s always something hidden between them and you, the opposition makes it a little more exciting, but in a dangerous kind of way.”

* * *

 

She's come back from Idris and it looks like all she wants is to sleep, eat and shower. He lets her go past without words, he figures it’s for the best. She stops and he’s surprised when she says, “No offense but your mother is a real witch.”

 

Alec laughs a little more freely than he might have when they first met, “None taken.”

 

He looks at her and feels like he’s seeing someone different, she’s harder than she used to be.

* * *

 

Her, Jace and Isabelle come back from recon that turned into something more direct, Jace and Isabelle are noisy with adrenaline, Lydia is stoic as she separates from them and puts away her weapons.

 

“What’s the count?”

 

“Jace three, your sister four.”

 

“What about you? Eight?” He grins.

 

“Goose egg,” she pauses, stares at him as if waiting for him to ask another question, then she goes on, says, “I’m going to bed.”

 

Somehow it seems she’s always walking past him.

 

Later, past the time when everyone’s gone to bed or back out, Alec finds her in the training room, the bag making whoop-whoop sounds as she knocks it around. They spar because he offers and afterwards they stare up at the ceiling, breathing hard, sweat still warm and rolling over their faces.

 

“I don’t feel very…I don’t feel like I have any edge left.” Her sudden words make him jump.

 

“You almost died, Lydia. Most people wouldn’t stick around in the place where it happened. But you did, you’re strong like that. It’s not easy, but you do it.”

 

There a polite cough for attention, Magnus waves, steps up, eyes them both with fake disgust, as if sweat is vulgar.

 

“I didn’t _almost_ anything, Right, Magnus?”

 

Magnus leans on a rack of weights, adjusts his sleeves with flourish. “I think you sprang right back, just fine.” He gives her a gentle grin, “Better, even.”

 

“Yeah, back. _Better_.”

 

Lydia scowls as she rises, unwrapping her hands as she leaves, Magnus watches her go.

 

Alec sits up, “What was that about?”

 

“I have no idea.”

 

Alec’s spent a lifetime learning about what makes downworlders tick, what muscles tightening signal that a weapon is going to be drawn or what twitching of fingers come before the spark and flare of dark magic, Magnus has his own tell.

 

Magnus is lying. 

* * *

 

Magnus and Lydia are standing close near a bank of computer screens, their faces pallid and tired in the glow of blue light, the Institute is following up on something making werewolves sick and the fae court is going through a particularly fruitful spring blooming, all over the city downworlders are feeling it.

 

They speak in low tones that Alec can’t make out, from the other side of the room Magnus looks tense and Lydia looks uncomfortable. He comes up the half-pace of stairs and catches Lydia’s: “I forgive you.”

 

She goes past, leaves the ‘main deck’ as Magnus is wont to call it.

 

“What did you do?”

 

Magnus looks at him, then he looks back at the screens, his profile is like stone, “She was dead, for a little under two minutes and no one noticed, no one panicked, because I just brought her back, a little pull and she was back. I just did it, sometimes magic is like that.” Magnus shrugs, like it doesn’t matter, that it’s okay that he doesn’t know how it happened or why or how he was able to do it.

 

Alec waits for Magnus to look at him.

 

“I don’t know where she went, I don’t know what she saw. It’s awful isn’t it?”

 

Alec looks at the screens, “No, it was kind.”

 

Magnus’s tone is low, as if an aside, “Not if someone was waiting. I'm scared to ask.”

* * *

 

“I didn’t see anything.” She says when Alec asks.

 

Again, he’s spent his life training, observing, watching. She’s lying. He knows.

 

Something inside of Lydia got broken and scarred over. She’s different. They’re all different.

* * *

 

It's their thing. Drinks, hunting, tours of Brooklyn or the Village. Tonight they stay in.

 

Alec watches them. The windows are open, the weather is warm, the city has been calm.

 

Magnus is touching her ankle like it’s something made of glass.

 

Alec is near drunk. Lydia is on her way. Magnus is as sober and somber as a funeral service. But there’s something in the balmy blanket of spring turning into summer all over the city tonight. It’s midsummer night’s eve.

 

There’s magic and more drink and Magnus brings Lydia to their bed, it happens in the natural progression of all things moving along while people drink together, time progressing, life happening when no one was really watching.

 

She’s below Magnus, hands wide and fingers spread open on his chest, Alec watches, drinks, studies the way they move together.

 

His heart is behind his tonsils, he’s imagined them together, and if Magnus moves like some big jungle cat then Lydia’s a wolf, all hunger and fight and a final submission that looks like dying.

 

Watching Magnus weave magic is something he sees almost every day, but it’s different watching him work it over on someone. It’s something primordial and dark and Lydia’s hips rise like the tide, her spine bends like a greenstick about to fracture and Alec understands what Magnus has told him before.

 

There are hidden things in the space between their bodies. A secret rhythm and when Magnus covers her it’s like ancient ritual and sacrifice, when his hands palm her breasts like he might reach through her chest Alec shivers.

 

When Lydia grasps the back of Magnus' thigh and plants her feet flat to the bed Alec feels like he’s been emptied of air.

 

There’s a keen sense of urgency and a delicious shade of almost shame he’s sure he feels more sharply than Lydia does, even after she’s brought to whining, Magnus’s magic pressing her arms wide open across the bed, her knees pressed up and open on her chest and stuck by the force of something unseen.

 

Magnus laughs, Lydia cants up and they resume movement that mimics something that lurks in dark places.

 

When they’ve gone still and boneless Magnus looks over to him and suddenly Alec feels the same magic forcing up his hips so invisible hands and smoke can remove him from his shorts, a different gentler strength pushes apart his thighs and takes his glass from his hand.

 

Magnus is sprawled lazily supine, hand waving patterns of magic all around the room, Lydia presses her shoulders to the headboard, knees tucked up to her chest like a nude alphabet letter. Her hair a hazy afterimage and her expression still half blissed out.

 

He reaches by habit for the back of the chair, something he can’t see is pressing into the sensitive spot below his sac, his cock throbs and Magnus doesn’t let him come closer to the bed until he’s gotten leaky and his balls ache heavily.

 

Magnus grins and asks, “You know what you look like right now?”

 

Alec pushes him to his back and Lydia’s eyes lid halfway, her stare remains as physical as a touch. He means to put Magnus on his knees but he ends up holding the footboard himself, Magnus pressing cool, slick fingers between his legs, and then inside.

His shoulders hunch, he’s too tall otherwise for Magnus to put his mouth on his ear and whisper filth.

 

The fullness inside of him, sudden and weighty is like a practice punch, it doesn’t hurt but it stuns him, Magnus puts sharp teeth on his shoulder and then there are new hands, sword calloused and small folding over his clenched fist and the bracket of his hip.

 

“Yeah?” Lydia questions, her exhale on his lips, he surges for her mouth, reaches for her hand, holds it over where he’s straining, Magnus laughs, thrusting up while he’s already seated deep inside.

 

She holds him in her hand and lets him press close, he ruts over her navel, the soft blonde of her mound.

 

She barely has a chance to breathe before Magnus’ mouth comes down like hawk after his has retreated.

 

Her teeth touch the bob of his throat, her sex fleecy warm and slick on the flare on his hip, the firm heat of the muscle of his thigh.

 

His mind goes white and they all relax under the weight of the night.

* * *

 

Mid-morning comes and his body feels like it could yawn for an hour, stretch luxurious and doze. They are naked and overheating in Magnus’ bed. Lydia wakes up after he does. Magnus' cheek is pressed to her lower back.

 

His own hands are in her long hair, her breasts are against his ribs.

 

Magnus wakes up, watches them. He conjures breakfast to the nightstand, toast floating into his waiting hand.

 

Alec wants to feel what Magnus has felt, he wants to know what Lydia felt.

 

Her body follows his hands, thigh pulling up over his hip and she asks if it’s alright as if she’s the one whose decided on doing it. Her mouth is plush and he’s kissing her during the single slow push inside, they rock lazily until he rolls and brings her astride.

 

The way she pushes her hair back and the way her arms hang, loose, open, just her hips moving, thighs strong with movement and muscle, the gentle up and down of her breasts, subtle and easy to miss, makes him wish the morning would last.

 

For what he thought he understood from watching her and Magnus he knows now he was clueless.

 

He only half understands how they’ve come to this, Lydia’s mouth pulls tight when she comes, pressing and forcing her hips closer in small dragging shoves. He chokes as he inhales, his own orgasm is a surprise, it feels like sleep, like the sun. Magnus’ mouth hangs open.

 

They eat toast in bed and he doesn’t even complain about the crumbs.

 

Alec falls back asleep.

 

He wakes up to the sound of Magnus somewhere else in the apartment, on the phone, Lydia has left. It’s almost evening.

 

It still feels like a dream, like magic, like something unrepeatable has happened.

* * *

 

He finds her back at the institute. “This is where you went?”

 

She looks up, hands spreading wide so he looks down at the table top she’s hunched over, “I had Idris reports, recon of the Village, and training to get done.”

 

“No note?”

 

She smiles and shakes her head, grumbling like she can’t believe his naiveté, “You know, you’re starting to sound like Magnus.”

 

“That a bad thing?”

 

“Not in itself, no. It’s probably good. I just feel all on my own now.”

 

He goes to the table and sits, “I take this as seriously as I did before.” He takes a stack of reports and a highlighter as if to prove himself.

 

“I didn’t say you didn’t.” She signs her name and rank on something official.

 

“What are you saying?”

 

She doesn’t look up from her papers, “I don’t think I take this as seriously as I used to. I thought I had a purpose in making sense of all this and I thought that since you thought the same thing that maybe it was true, only certain people could do _this_. That this was important.”

 

He nods, he understands, “I’m happier now than I was then.”

 

She meets his eyes, serious and sure, “Good. None of this is important. I’m leaving the Institute.”

 

It’s not so surprising. “You’re going back to Idris.”

 

“No. I like New York. I just don’t want to be here.” She doesn’t say it with maliciousness just a matter of fact tone. “I don’t like it here. I don’t think I ever liked Idris either.”

 

“…”

 

“The real world was something so alive, before everything changed. I thought somehow when John died it meant my new place was a place like this. It’s not.”

 

“So where are you going?”

 

“I’ll be around. In the city.”

 

“Good, Magnus says you make better Manhattan’s than I do.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the belief that magic ferns bloom on Midsummer eve and promise luck, love, other assorted stuff and things to those who pick it.


End file.
